While overshadowed slightly by this week’s cracking issue of Captain Britain, its none the less another cracking part of Emerald Eclipse in Green Lantern Corps this month.
Picking up with last month’s revelation, we get the backstory to Sinestro and Soranik’s relationship, as Sinestro reveals how Soranik’s mother had been forced to hide her away from him when he had started to dominate Korugar and they’d started receiving death threats (and you have to wonder how much of it was to protect Soranik from Sinestro himself). There’s something very creepy about watching Sinestro stalk Soranik throughout her life, from giving her her distinctive facial tattoo(revealed to contain a tracker so he’d always be able to find her), to taking the photograph of her and her adoptive parents on her graduation day. Despite the creepiness, there’s an obvious amount of love for Soranik from Sinestro. We see them flying together, and him allowing her to play with his GL ring when she was young, and he comments on how he hopes the upcoming Blackest Night will allow them to fight side by side, before taking off for Daxam to deal with Mongul.
We cut from there to the riot on Oa, which is in full swing. Patrick Gleason really captures the chaos going on, with the Green Lanterns struggling to keep everything contained. We get loads of cameos from the villains who were contained in the Sciencells as well, including Alex Nero. I wonder if he can still tap the Ion power or not…
The big events though are taking place on Daxam. Struggling to get the Daxamites motivated, Sodam has decided on a bold strategy. He’ll use his element of surprise to try and take down Mongul hoping that with their leader gone, the Sinestro Corps will be in disarray enough to give the Daxamites the edge and drive them from their world. While he’s lost his natural powers under Daxam’s red sun, Sodam is confident that with the Ion power, he can pull it off.
However, he’s not counted on Scar, who blocks his access to the Ion power. Its a really odd scene to be honest. Unlike Kyle, Sodam is deliberately restricted from accessing the power of Ion, and must request authorisation from his ring before he’s allowed to use it. Meaning that contrary to what we’ve thought, up until this issue, Sodam has actually just had normal GL powers (combined with his Kryptonian ones). It seems odd to me that his powers have been cut off in this way. Its perhaps not completely shocking, given how much the Guardians love being control freaks, but its strangely at odds with how Kyle was in the role. Of course, since Kyle was the torchbearer and responsible for resurrecting the Guardians, I guess they just trust him more than Sodam. I also wonder if its a safety mechanism to prevent someone else tapping the power like Nero did during the Ion series.
Fortunately Sodam’s ring suggests that a direct energy impact might be enough to override the block, and allow him temporary access to Ion. Chancing it, Sodam drops his shields, and allows Mongul to hit him with all he’s got. It works, and Ion is unleashed, and with the power dropping quickly, we get the surprising (and brilliant) move of Sodam flying straight into Daxam’s sun and re-energising it, turning it yellow.
I loved that ending. I never saw it coming, and its a stroke of genius. Its nice to see Sodam being smart and the promise of next issue having the Sinestro Corps facing a planet of people with Superman’s powers is brilliant. Its also nice to see the Ion power being used for a big feat. While we now know why Sodam hasn’t seemed particularly powerful, its always fun to see the Ion power do something impressive, be it re-energising Daxam’s sun, or Kyle’s containment of Nero back in Ion #6.
This story arc, more than anything else has really helped build Sodam’s place in the GLC. I’d said at the time that his introduction and ascension to the Ion power during the Sinestro Corps War felt too rushed, especially with the way Kyle was being booted from the role. However this arc has really allowed Peter Tomasi the chance to focus in on the character, and he’s all the much better for it. Still not convinced about the Sodam/Arisia relationship though, it’ll be interesting to see exactly where Tomasi plans on taking that.
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